Idiots First by Bernard Malamud

Cronin a scotch.
    â€œTell me why you told me this,” he asked Mary Lou after he had drunk from his glass.
    â€œI don’t know for sure,” she said. “Some of it is because I like you. I like the way you teach in your class. That’s why I got the idea of telling you.”
    â€œBut why, specifically?”
    â€œBecause everything’s different now.”
    â€œThe past doesn’t bother you?”
    â€œNot much. I wanted to tell you before this but ] couldn’t do it in your office without a drink to start me off.”
    â€œDo you want me to do anything for you?” Cronin asked her.
    â€œFor instance, what?” said Mary Lou.
    â€œIf you want to talk to anybody about yourself I could get you the name of a psychiatrist.”
    â€œThanks,” she said. “I don’t need one. The guy I talk to about myself will have to do it for nothing, for kicks.”
    She asked Cronin for one of his cigarettes and smoked while he finished his drink.
    As they were getting ready to leave, Mary Lou said, “The way I figure, it wasn’t all my fault but it’s dead and gone now. I got the right to think of the future.”
    â€œYou have,” said Cronin.
    On the ride home he felt more objective and not unsympathetic to the girl, yet he was still disappointed, and from time to time, irritated with himself.
    â€œAnyway,” Cronin told her, “you can work for a better way of life now.”
    â€œThat’s why I want an education for,” Mary Lou said.

    2.
    It took Cronin a surprisingly long time to get over having been let down by Mary Lou. He had built her up in his mind as a woman he might want to spend some time with, and the surprise of her revelation, and his disillusionment, lingered so long he felt unsettled. “What’s this, Marge all over again?” He didn’t want any more of that, and not from this girl. He saw her in class, as usual, three times a week. She seemed to listen with the same interest, maybe less interested, but she didn’t approach him and no longer waited at his desk to walk with him to his office. Cronin understood that to mean he was to make the next move now that he knew, but he didn’t make it. What could he say to her—that he wished he didn’t know? Or now that he knew, sometimes when he glanced at her in class he pictured her being paid off by the last guy she had slept with. She was in his thoughts much of the time. He wondered what would have happened that night they were out if she hadn’t made that confession. Could he have guessed from the way she performed in bed that she had been a professional? He continued to think of having her and sometimes the thought was so wearing he avoided looking at her in class. He found his desire hard to bear but after a month it wore down. She seemed not very interesting to him then, and he was often aware how hard her expression was. He felt sorry for her and occasionally smiled, and once in a while she seemed cynically to smile back.
    Cronin had made friends with a painter, George Getz, an assistant professor in the art department, an active, prematurely
bald man, with whom he went on sketching trips, usually on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. George sketched or did water colors as Cronin looked on or sat against a tree, smoking. Sometimes he wandered along streams and in the woods. When the painter, married from youth and the father of three girls, was tied down during the weekend, Cronin drove off by himself or tried walking alone, though generally he cared little for walking in town, and wasn’t sure which direction to go next. One fine Sunday in April, when George was busy with his family, Cronin started on a walk but it soon began to seem like work so he returned to his apartment and sat on the bed. Wanting company he searched in his mind for who, and after some doubts looked up Mary Lou Miller’s number and dialed it. He wasn’t sure why